


Uncertain Sideways Streets

by grenadine



Category: Thick of It (UK)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-10
Updated: 2010-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 11:28:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grenadine/pseuds/grenadine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the election, Nicola Murray hits a wall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for femgenficathon. The prompt used was "I am fit for high positions, by God, and I am going my way with pride" - Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (994-1091), Arab-Andalusian poet.
> 
> Title from The New Pornographers' "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk". Takes place after series three, so spoilers for that.

Inside the Party's election headquarters, chaos reigns. Papers are stacked to the damp ceilings and cascade from desks, tables, chairs. Staffers dart through the tiny corridors and in and out of rooms with expressions varyingly panic-laced, sleep-deprived, and stoic. The lights on the second floor flicker, but no one complains, because everyone knows they barely have enough money to cover the electric bills.

Being a Cabinet Minister and ostensibly part of the Party's 'inner circle', or whatever the fuck the press likes to refer to it as these days, Nicola has spent enough time in the dingy place to develop her own metaphors for it, of labyrinths, mazes, underground tunnels and bunkers during the War, fire stations and A&E's.

But right now, as she's standing in Malcolm's office, all she can think of are spiderwebs.

Malcolm has one hand splayed on a stack of memos. Twisting the top sheet carefully from side to side, he says, "It's not the best situation."

Oh, but how Nicola hates when he doesn't even bother to be offensive, when things are too fucking _dire_ even for the usual unpleasantries. "Not the best-I'm _seven points back_!"

Malcolm slowly nods. "Yes."

"How-okay." Nicola covers her face for a moment. "Okay. It's-it's one week's numbers, right?  There's room for development there, I mean, three weeks? That's plenty of time."

"Nicola," he says quietly, cutting her off, and her heart drops into her stomach. Malcolm looks worse than she's ever seen him, about twice as tired and thrice as vampiric, holding the entire campaign together from his office with nothing but sheer force of will. Nicola feels as though she could put out a hand and shatter the whole delicate operation, swipe it away like gossamer.

He taps a pen twice on his blotter. "This is what's going to happen." He pauses. "Go home."

Nicola blinks. "What?"

"I'm going to put this very simply, yeah? You are now a fucking liability to this campaign. I don’t know why your numbers are lower than an eighty-year-old's _tits_ right now, but you need to toddle off back to your constituency and fucking _fix_ it. And until you do, you are not doing press for this party, all right? In fact, if a camera comes anywhere near you, I want you to run in the fucking opposite direction. Are we clear?"

There is a long pause. Nicola bites her lip, so angry the air in the office is practically thrumming around her. "Okay," she says, quietly. "I get it. You're chucking me off the raft."

"Nicola-"

"No, no, I understand, 'She's weak, let's toss her overboard for the sharks and maybe we'll survive'. I take it you're cutting off my funding as well?"

Malcolm's face wears the locked down, blank expression saved for when she's figured out something he didn't want or expect her to know. "Your initial allotment is not being touched."

"My initial allotment," says Nicola, her voice beginning to rise. "My _initial_ allotment is nowhere near substantial enough for a fucking _local council race_ , and you expect me to-" She cuts herself off, a new thought coming to her head. "Or you don't expect me to. Is that it? Is this your fucking revenge for not backing you up against Fleming?"

"Nicola, don't make this fucking _personal_."

"Maybe I shouldn't even try, then," she continues, not hearing him at all, "if the only thing waiting for me's fucking _humiliation_. Maybe I should just walk away now, like," she laughs mirthlessly, "like I was going to, Malcolm, before you _fucking asked me to stay!_ "

Malcolm is silent. "Look," he says finally. "You have a choice here."

"Oh, Christ, Malcolm," she says. "When do I ever?"

"You have a choice," he repeats. "You can walk away. Cite family responsibilities, your husband's massive coke problem, whatever. We'll find someone else for your seat, we'll probably lose it but we're probably going to fucking lose it anyway, so that's a wash." He makes a dismissive gesture with one hand, and she wants to kill him.

"Or," he continues, "you stay in it." Malcolm pushes his chair back and starts looking through a pile of manila folders. Apparently the meeting is over. "You have until tonight," he says.

Nicola takes a breath, then nods stiffly. "Tonight, then." He doesn't look at her as she picks up her briefcase and leaves.

She gets about five feet away from his office before she slams her fist into the wall, in full view of the entire Communications department.

*

The next thing she knows, Glenn and Ollie have hustled her into the men's toilet, where Glenn is gently examining her hand and Ollie is being not at all helpful.

"You really are fucking screwed," he's saying. "I mean, honestly, how does he expect you to talk to voters? Get up on the roof of your house with a fucking megaphone and-"

"Yes, all right, _thank you_ ," snaps Nicola, her voice echoing off the tile. "Glenn, stop _fussing_ , it isn't broken."

"Shame you didn't punch Malcolm," says Glenn, handing her a bunch of paper towels. "Or the PM. That probably would've won you some support."

Nicola blows her nose. "Yes, well," she says. "It's not as though I can run against the government that I'm a fucking part of, it is? Even if I'm getting," she ticks off on one hand, "no media support, no money, and the two of you off doing…whatever the fuck it is you're doing for Malcolm." Her two aides exchange looks.

Ollie says, hesitantly, "He didn't say _why_ you're seven points back, did he?"

 "No, no." She sighs, lowering her head. "And I don't understand it. I mean, I honestly thought I was okay, I mean, _we're_ fucking screwed, but I was-there's been nothing in the polling data to suggest otherwise, has there? And you've seen the little twerp they've got standing against me?"

"I thought for sure they'd get someone a bit more substantial," says Ollie. "He's sort of…tweedy."

"And Etonian," adds Glenn.

A staffer pokes his head in the door, realizes there's a meeting going on, and vanishes again.

Nicola is perched on the tile counter next to the sink. She's quiet for a few moments, then pushes herself onto her feet. "Right. Well, I'm off to...do something. Go hand out leaflets, or maybe stab myself. Have just a _lovely_ three weeks, the two of you."

"Nicola," says Glenn. "Are you-you're quite sure you're all right?"

She's really not, but she manages to smile. "Thanks for the-" she says, and holds up the paper towels.

It's only after she leaves the building she realizes she may never step inside it again.

*

Nicola gets home and is immediately swept up in a million domestic things: Katie needs the piano tuner in, Ella and Annie are having a massive row about something about a boy, William has built a fort out of picture books in the study and then knocked it over, they're out of milk, no one can find the cat. Two hours later, her mother shows up to watch the children, and Nicola remembers the party that she and James are meant to be attending that night.

She hasn't said a word about the fact that she seems, today, to have lost an election. As ever, she's barely had time to think about it.

The party was James's idea, and is filled with mostly his friends. Which makes the whole thing a bit pointless from her perspective, given that most of them wouldn't vote for anyone to the left of Hitler. Nicola makes polite conversation, amuses herself by gently steering the discussions so that her partners make transparent allusions to their various deplorable political opinions, and keeps an eye on her husband, waiting for a chance to make an exit.

She's getting herself a drink when she overhears James talking with one of the thirty-six investment bankers in the room about Steve Fleming.

"-and it was your wife's department in the middle of the whole scandal!" the banker is saying. "That can't be good for her image, mate."

James chuckles. "My wife isn't exactly playing _power politics_ over there, if you catch my meaning. And the Fleming affair, I can't imagine she knew anything about that."

"Oh, you are _so_ lucky I've already punched something today," Nicola says, under her breath, though it's nothing she hasn't heard before. James is nowhere near intelligent enough to understand that what goes into the papers isn't the whole story, she thinks wryly, or perhaps he simply doesn't have the imagination. Always in love with the surfaces of things, with the way things _look_. The tosser.

In the middle of pouring a glass of wine, Nicola startles herself by realizing that there are very few people who know more about 'the Fleming affair' than her. And the snap election...she'd been the first of the Cabinet to know about that, hadn't she?

Strange, she thinks, but of course it means nothing. Just something to wonder about once she's finished being sacked by her constituents, she supposes, a mark of her unfortunate ability to be in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time. She absently weighs the wineglass in her hand, the one that doesn't currently ache. Knowledge isn't power, not unless you can use it for something.

*

It's two in the morning before Nicola, sitting in her study with a lukewarm cup of tea, starts seriously thinking about her options. They are few, and terrible, and she wishes she were somewhere very, very far away. Like America.

She sighs. The house is dead quiet, and for once she doesn't feel as though she's being crowded in from all sides.

Politics is a pendulum game, and Nicola knows there are precious few stories in her business that don't end eventually in defeat, resignation, pain. A car accident is frankly one of the least ignominious career endings one could hope for, and to leave quietly, and be forgotten, a mercy.

Her Blackberry sits on the desk. One message, and she can walk away, euthanize her political career instead of watching it get shot in the back of the head by a tweedy Etonian.

But as she thinks about doing it, when she starts composing a text to Malcolm that begins, "You fucking bastard, enjoy your loss, shame I won't be around to see it," she stops. She can't.

It would be easier to pretend that none of this ever mattered to her, but she's never been particularly good at lying, not even to herself. A terrible trait for a politician to have.

Nicola remembers setting up her exit strategy, the job in America, in a manic rush of activity and phone calls, not giving herself any time to think about it, not admitting that running away would be a defeat, even if it would make her happier, even if she might do more good elsewhere, even if without Malcolm there she stood about as much chance as a sapling in a hurricane. On to better and brighter things, no harm done and no one to miss her once she'd gone.

But then Malcolm had returned, like some grey-suited fucking _Lazarus_ , and had cornered her, forced her to stop and think. And even though nothing had really changed, she'd said _yes, okay, I'll stay_.

And, sod the Foreign Office, she had fucking _meant_ it.

Nicola sets down her cup. Reaching into her desk, she pulls out a street map, heavily marked with highlights and scribbled notes. She unfolds it, weighs it down with her empty cup and a box of tissues, and looks at her constituency.

She supposes this is something like a choice.

She texts Malcolm. _I'm still in_ , she types, _but you knew that_.

His reply is nearly instant: _See you on the other side, Nicola. And put some fucking ice on that hand_.

*


	2. Chapter 2

A man named Mr. Chattisbourne is telling Nicola about his difficulties finding employment in the last year. Nicola leans in his doorway, nodding at intervals, but she's repeating to herself over and over again: _don't ask about the deer head, don't ask about the deer head, don't ask about the..._

"That's an interesting, um, _piece_ you have above your fireplace, Mr. Chattisbourne."

_Oh, fuck._

He turns around to look at the great big fuck-off dead _monstrosity_ above his fireplace that Nicola cannot take her eyes off of, and she inwardly berates herself. _Never_ remark on people's home furnishings. Compliments come off as patronizing or ingratiating, anything else sounds like an insult, and anyway it derails whatever conversation you're trying to have.

"Oh, that," says Mr. Chattisbourne, turning back around with a glimmer of pride in his eyes. "That's Bessie. Snagged her last summer, me and my brother."

Nicola isn't sure from this distance, but she thinks the dead deer _might_ possibly have a dead rabbit in its mouth.

"Well, it's," Nicola struggles to find the appropriately politic response, "quite impressive?"

Mr. Chattisbourne smiles, pleased, and then says, "Actually, that reminds me, I wanted a word about that fox hunting ban-"

Conversation officially derailed. Nicola sighs.

Five minutes later, she manages to extricate herself from the now entirely awkward doorstep meeting, and walks a couple houses down to where her lone aide is waiting, with a clipboard.

"All right, ma'am?" he asks, taking out his earbuds.

She nods. "Arthur," she says, "I know you're not doing it on purpose, but could you try to look a little less...lurking about? I don't want people thinking you're about to rob them."

He looks chagrined.

"It's fine," says Nicola. "You didn't know."

While the local universities' political clubs are an excellent source of cheap labor (pizza, plus the opportunity for externship credit, does the trick), the students tend to lack a certain amount of training. _Any_ training, really, but since all Nicola needs is someone to wait outside houses and make sure no one lures her inside and tries to murder her, that's all right.

The clipboard is unnecessary, but Nicola figures it makes people feel more important.

"Any notes, ma'am?" asks Arthur, as they head back to her car.

"Well," says Nicola, "I think you can cross his name off." She pauses. "And write 'dead deer' in the margin."

*

On her first afternoon of canvassing, Nicola gives up on the list of previous contacts that her constituency office has provided for her, and just starts randomly knocking on doors, roughly following the marked-up constituency map she's kept from her first election. It's a crude strategy, but with no money, or staff, the only resource Nicola has left is herself, and she is out of ideas.

Canvassing is a fiddly business. Eventually, every politician in the world runs into the same problem with it: it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to be interested in every single person one happens to come across. Logically, this makes perfect sense, even your best friend is boring when she won't shut up about her fucking teacup poodle or her kidney operation, but canvassing supposedly implies that a politician is deeply interested in the opinions of her constituency, and especially in those of the person she is speaking to at the moment. No matter what those opinions might be.

It thus becomes necessary to lie a little bit, if not in words, then in manner.

Nicola knocks lightly on another door, carefully arranging her face to look interested and competent and sympathetic, and to hide, as always, the tiny surge of fear. It's not as though she hasn't done this a thousand times, Nicola, nearly alone among her profession, actually _likes_ canvassing, but then she's never found it particular difficult to listen to people. Which is mostly what's required.

Journalists, on the other hand, expect her to _talk_. Then again, Nicola's not sure she'd quite classify journalists as people anymore.

It's just that it's a little like playing Russian roulette with your self esteem. Behind one door is someone who thinks well of you, behind the next, you're basically Satan.

The door opens. Nicola smiles, says her name, asks if there's anything they'd like to discuss.

Repeat, repeat, repeat, until the houses run out. Which, Nicola has calculated, will take three years, four months, and twenty-two days.

She has two and a half weeks.

*

Someone must have seen her working her way down one street or another, because by the end of the first week, there's an article in the Telegraph that-

"They've called me the Wandering Minister? That doesn't even make any fucking sense, plus it makes me sound fucking _senile_ ," Nicola complains over the phone to Ollie, dropping her voice as Katie and Ella pass through the kitchen.

"Anyway," she continues, "Malcolm won't be best pleased, will he?"

"It's on page five, Nicola," Ollie says, "and anyway, the story's not really about you, is it? You're only mentioned in passing."

The story is in fact about several low-level ministers who are having difficulties in their constituencies. Nicola is named only near the end, practically an afterthought. She'd had no idea there were five or six others in as much trouble as her, not that it makes her feel any better about her own predicament.

Plus, she's inadvertently broken Malcolm's no-press decree, so she's expecting her house to be firebombed at any moment.

Ollie is being shouted at on the other end of the line. Nicola waits for the noise to die down, and then asks, "Was that anything to do with the debate last night?"

"Got it in one," he says, wearily. (Nicola has found that Ollie is much more tolerable when he's too exhausted to make jokes.) "We weren't expecting much from Tom, but we weren't expecting the Others to come up and fucking _debag_ us either."

(At the beginning of the election, the staff at headquarters was referring to the various parties involved as Us, Them, and Those Other Fuckers. Politics being a business filled with nerds, this last got shortened to just 'the Others' pretty quickly.)

"I suppose you wouldn't let me trade places with you for a bit?" Ollie asks. "Crap food, four hours' sleep a night, fucking psychotic Press and Comms officials constantly breathing down your neck?"

"I have had," replies Nicola, "three men answer the door in their pants. Today."

"Well, good luck with that, then," he says quickly.

"Thanks ever so much for your support, Oliver."

"We’re always here for you, Minister."

She rings off as the front doorbell chimes.

"Parcel for you, ma'am?" The bicycle courier hands over a bulky, wrapped package. Nicola resists the urge to ask whether it's been checked for incendiaries or anthrax, as it's sealed with familiar document tape and she recognizes the courier.

Inside is a binder, which she sets on the hall table, and a note.

_Nicola,_

_A wee fucking birdie has informed me that, since your main activity these days consists of stumbling around neighbourhoods like an improperly tranquillised fucking glue-bound racehorse, you might have a spot of free time in your schedule to look over these hospital figures for the next debate, a task which I am farming out to you because the inmates at HMP Happy Happy Fun Election Time are all very very fucking busy dealing with figures that are massively more consequential. I would humbly ask you take some time from spouting nonsense to the hoi polloi for this, and by ask I of course mean I expect this back with notes at fucking doors open tomorrow morning, at the very latest._

_If a breath of this gets to the press, I will rip out your fucking lungs and turn them into a decorative holiday centrepiece, etc. etc._

_Cheers,_

_Malcolm_

Nicola leans in the doorway, eyes shut. "I could kill him," she muses, half-under her breath. "No one would care. I could move to Greece, take an assumed name-"

"Ma'am?" says the courier, a little worriedly.

Nicola shakes her head, opens her eyes. "Do I need to sign something?"

"I just need a time for pickup tomorrow."

"Seven, no. Better make it six." Nicola picks up the binder, looks towards the study.

"Six? Only that's before my rounds start," the courier manages before Nicola shuts the door. She hesitates for a moment.

"Coffee," she decides, and heads for the kitchen.

*

 _Is there anything in particular that makes you feel that way?_ is one of Nicola's favourite redirects, a bit of rhetorical alchemy that can turn generalities and soundbytes into something she can actually work with.

"I'm just not comfortable with the way the government is run right now," says one woman.

"Okay," says Nicola, trying not to disagree, conceding a small point in order to win a larger one. "Is there anything in particular that makes you feel that way?"

She tosses out that phrase and gets back stories, of all shapes and colours. Lost jobs, missing benefits, wayward children, all the ills of the world, pieced out house by house. If she's being honest, she's always rather pleased at how well it works, in a tiny sort of way. (Any real pride Nicola ever felt at being able to play conversational ping-pong has evaporated thanks to prolonged contact with Malcolm, who plays five-dimensional chess.)

Mostly, Nicola can't do anything but listen, but she tries to help where she can, if only because the constant sense of powerlessness is exhausting, would overwhelm her completely if she let it. She gives out names, information, one afternoon she recalculates someone's LHA on the back of a take-out flyer. On more than one occasion, she hands out phone numbers and instructions to mention her name, not that, Nicola thinks wryly, that will have much of an impact, not that any campaign manager (which she doesn't fucking _have_ , thank you very much) wouldn't call her efforts a waste of valuable time. But, well, it's something; it is her fucking job, after all.

For the next two weeks, anyway.

The binders keep coming. Nicola doesn't sleep much, starts wearing her hair in loose, messy ponytails, and spends hours at night poring over graphs and summaries and making notes. Her constituency office puts together a few community meetings, a few innocuous little stories run in the local press, and her constituents begin to look as though they're expecting her knock at their doors.

Occasionally, she puts the television on late at night, very quietly, in order not to wake anyone, and watches as the bad news keeps piling up, and a succession of government officials implode in interesting ways on camera. It's a bit like watching a star collapse in on itself; sometimes she's grateful not to be anywhere near the action. Number 10 feels very far away.

One evening, she scribbles on the first page of a preliminary budget ( _not_ theirs, but she isn't going to ask how he'd gotten it):

_Malcolm,_

_Your last dispatch had quite the expansionary effect on my youngest's vocabulary. If you could see fit to tone it down, much appreciated. Furthermore, this is absolute rubbish. If they want to balance out like this they'll have to auction off the NHS, the Queen, and the Isle of Wight, and whoever's doing means testing over there ought to be given an award for Total Fucking Bollocks, please ref. pages 56-57, charts 13 and 24, and especially page 87, which is in several pieces in the back pocket of the binder. Further notes follow._

_\- Nicola_

The next binder to arrive (education statistics) has the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "fuck" taped onto the cover, along with a note in Malcolm's handwriting, which is getting increasingly unsteady as the days pass:

_Nicola,_

_It takes a fucking village. Just doing my bit._

_\- Malcolm_

She smiles properly for the first time in days.

*

Nicola has resigned herself to watching from the sidelines as her party slowly collapses, when Tom manages to do something so outrageously, mind-bogglingly, un-fucking-believably _stupid_ , she's honestly surprised she can't see a miniature fallout cloud rising above the city.

When she's out that morning, it doesn't seem like a total catastrophe, the reactions of the people she speaks to are sympathetic, fairly measured, even understanding. But as the day wears on, they start sounding more and more like neatly-packaged phrases gleaned from the news, and Nicola detects the hand of Opposition HQ in the wording, the emphases, the _inevitable_ conclusions drawn.

Basically, they're completely fucked.

She gets one mass-mail text from Malcolm ( _NO. FUCKING. PRESS._ ), and picks up immediately when Glenn rings her that evening.

"This is really fucking bad, right?"

"Well," says Glenn, indistinctly, HQ sounding like complete bedlam behinds him, "I suppose no one has actually _died_ as of yet, although I believe Jamie has frequently come quite close to making that statement inaccurate."

Nicola sighs. "I'm guessing you didn't just call to commiserate."

"I'm to reiterate to you that it would be extremely advisable not to talk to any press right now."

"Right."

There's a long pause.

" _And?_ " Nicola prompts. The background noise abruptly dies down; she has the strong suspicion that Glenn has just shut himself into a cupboard.

"Nicola," he whispers, "Ollie and I, well, we were noticing some _strangeness_ with the polling data."

"I'm not following."

He takes a breath. "We think the figures out of headquarters are being doctored."

" _What?_ "

"We haven't got proof or anything, but I've found some discrepancies in the press releases, and we think the numbers, not just yours, several others, too, are being tilted. _Significantly_."

"But," Nicola says, feeling ill. "How fucking far back am I, then? Ten points? Eleven? Glenn, what the fuck am I going to do?"

"I'm sorry, Nicola, but we really thought you ought to know."

"Right," says Nicola, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Well, thank you. I suppose."

"Nicola-"

"I'm sure you've got lots to do, Glenn, you should probably get out of that cupboard." She pauses, steadying her voice. "And that was not in any way intended as a reference to your sexuality."

Glenn lets this pass. "Be well, Nicola."

"Thank you," she says, meaning it, and rings off, although she's _not_ well, not well at all.

*

In the last days of the campaign, Nicola's efforts are subsumed into the larger Party operation, as HQ deploys scores of people onto the streets to knock doors and hand out voting information (which is _always_ necessary, if you can think of a way to hypothetically fuck up a ballot, rest assured, several thousand people have already actually done it). The volunteers have energy levels that Nicola finds baffling after three continuous weeks of canvassing; they wear red from head to toe and cheerfully carpet the streets with literature.

Nicola, who's always disliked the colour, limits herself to a single red rosette, not really keen on displaying party loyalty at this particular time in her life. She quietly steels herself for election night, reminding herself that yes, it will be terrible, yes, it will be humiliating, but at least it will be fucking _over_ , and then she can go take a nap or fall off a cliff or do whatever the fuck she wants.

*

So when she wins, it does come as a bit of a shock.

*

The room is complete pandemonium and Nicola's mobile buzzes at approximately the same moment that she is tackled by all four of her children at once, so it's a little while before she manages to dig it out and read the message:

_Congratulations, Nicola. Your presence is kindly requested at headquarters, we have a car waiting outside, JN._

Nicola frowns at Julius's text, but hasn't time to consider it properly, what with instructing James to watch the children, yes, _all_ the children, no, I don't _know_ for how long, and hustling outside to the car, dodging cameras and reporters, feeling utterly confused, but like a massive weight has been lifted off her shoulders.

She's won. She doesn't know _how_ , but she's fucking _won_.

In the car, though, she takes out her mobile and looks at the message again, not able to ignore the niggling feeling that _something isn't right_.

She raps on the dividing window of the car, and the driver rolls it down.

"I'm terribly sorry," she says, "but when did you get the call to bring the car down here?"

"This morning, ma'am. Is there a problem?"

"No, no," she says, and slumps back in her seat, thinking.

Suddenly, she sits bolt upright. "Oh, _fucking hell_. Oh, fuck. They _knew_. Oh, I'm going to fucking _kill him_."

The driver gives her a slightly-alarmed look through the rearview mirror, and Nicola dimly realizes the window is still rolled down.

"Sorry, sorry, not you," she says quickly, and the driver gives her another strange look and puts the window up. Nicola spends the rest of the drive punching numbers into her mobile, but the lines are all busy.

*

Headquarters is a fucking disaster zone. The activity swirling around Nicola as she arrives is intense and frantic, everyone she sees has at least one phone glued to their ear. Those people not yelling orders into electronic devices are walking around looking shell-shocked. Things seen to be rapidly going down the shitter. Nicola manages to walk around for a while completely unnoticed by anyone, a little awed at the sheer amount of movement, of kinetic energy.

Someone calls out the name of a constituency and everything stops, all eyes turn to the television sets scattered everywhere. Nicola, backed into a corner of the room to avoid being run over, feels as though the entire building is holding its breath, waiting. When the results are announced, it's like a collective blow to the stomach, this one is a major, major loss for the Party, and if anyone had any illusions that they might win tonight, they've surely vanished now.

Only once or twice before has Nicola actually been able to sense history twisting around her, shifting into a new pattern before her eyes, and it always feels the same: uncanny, the strangest, unsettling _joy_.

She'll never tell anyone, but it nearly makes the whole fucking thing worth it.

"Nicola!" She's walking through a corridor when she's hailed by Ollie and Glenn, and there's some awkward hugging (Glenn) and apparently sincere congratulations (Ollie).

"A bit of good news amongst the general carnage, right, Minister?" says Glenn, smiling.

"I think you can probably stop calling her that now," says Ollie. Nicola rolls her eyes at him.

"Glenn," she says. "Do you remember that conversation we had about the polling?"

He exchanges glances with Ollie. "It must have been nothing, I mean, obviously you _won_ , and we were never able to find any proof."

"No, no, never mind that, I'm your fucking proof, Glenn, did you ever consider that the numbers might have been doctored down instead of up?"

"But that's ridiculous, why the fuck would anyone-?"

"I don't know," says Nicola. "I don't _know_ , but I certainly know who the fuck to ask. Where's Malcolm?"

Her two aides exchange glances.

"He's up on the roof," offers Ollie.

She blinks. "What?"

"He's upstairs, somewhere? On the roof, I think?" repeats Ollie.

"We've just lost an election," says Nicola, slowly, "and Malcolm's on the roof."

They look at her, uncomprehending.

Nicola sighs. "Where are the fucking stairs?"

*

She's nearly to the roof when she runs into Julius, who beams congratulations at her and shakes her hand.

"Well done, Nicola, well done, _indeed_ , your family must be very proud, I hope?"

"I-well, yes, I suppose they must be," Nicola says, smiling hugely at him and not taking her eyes off the door to the stairs. "If you'll excuse me, Julius, I just have to-"

"Right, well, I was hoping you might be able to come to a little _meeting_ we're having in a while, just a little _strategy_ discussion, to plan for the exciting weeks ahead."

Nicola looks at him blankly. "You want me to come to a strategy meeting."

"Well, one election isn't the end of the world, Nicola. Like a phoenix, we _shall_ rise again, you know. And given your _exceptional_ performance today, and the help you've managed to give us with some of that material Malcolm was passing along to you, I think your input would be extremely valuable."

"Um," says Nicola. "Um, okay?"

"Splendid," Julius says. "I shall see you _anon_." He brushes past her, and she stands motionless, staring after him in blank incomprehension. She shakes her head, and opens the stairwell door.

*

Nicola isn't sure what she expects to find up there. A bonfire of confidential documents, maybe, or a wedding's worth of empty beer bottles. But there's only Malcolm, leaning against a parapet and looking down at the hubbub below. She props the door open and walks over.

She's sure he notices her long before he says anything. "Hey, it's the fucking gypsy girl. Back from your wanderings, yeah?"

"Malcolm," she greets him simply. She carefully leans over the parapet to get a look for herself. The press has set up camp all around the entrance to headquarters, their floodlights making the building look like a castle about to be stormed by a torch-bearing mob.

Malcolm nods down at the light below. "Care to do some looting before the zombie hordes arrive? I've got my eye on Julius's fucking laser printer."

Nicola picks speculatively at the stone wall. "I never was seven points back, was I?"

He very nearly laughs, then says shortly, "No."

"Jesus, Malcolm." She takes a breath, and turns abruptly to look him full in the eyes. "You really are a fucking bastard, you know that? Do you have any idea what the last three fucking weeks have been like for me, you insufferable, megalomaniacal, fucking _manipulative_ fucking _arsehole_?"

Malcolm watches her impassively, which only serves to make her angrier: "Yes! All right! I admit it, I fucked up with Steve Fleming, okay? But what the fuck do you think gives you the right, _Malcolm_ , the right to play games with _my_ fucking _life_?"

She storms away from the barrier, only to be stopped in her tracks by a wall of sound coming from the stairwell, an argument even more vitriolic than the one she's currently having with Malcolm, although his contributions have thus far been limited to a single raised eyebrow.

"God," she says to herself, bewildered, "what the hell's going on down there?"

"Aye, I see the fucking circus games have started," says Malcolm, just behind her. Nicola refuses to admit that he can startle her even when they're both standing on a fucking flat fucking _roof_ , so she simply puts a hand to her throat and breathes, her eyes tracking Malcolm as he moves around her to the open door.

At the same time, there's a roar from the edge of the roof and the hazy glow from the street suddenly brightens, flashes like lightning, it seems someone has gone outside to talk to the press. Nicola shivers, moves closer to the door.

"Listen to that," says Malcolm, standing on the side of the doorway opposite her. "You hear that? They're dead, those people. Walking fucking corpses. Look in the papers tomorrow, it'll be their fucking obituaries printed on the page. This one's interview. This one's fucking scandal. That one's fucking retarded excuse for a policy agenda. Dead and buried. Gone. But _you_ ," and at this point she's almost afraid to look at him, but she can't _not_. "You're still _alive_ , Nicola. Your name's not on the fucking burning lists. All those cunts down there, people hate them now, but, oh, not you, darling. You're fucking _loved_."

Nicola finds she wants to speak, but no sound comes out, at first.

"You," and she stops, because it's absurd, it doesn't make any sense, she almost wants to laugh. "Keeping me out of the press…you were _protecting_ me? Malcolm, I- _why?_ "

He looks at her strangely, and she thinks she should already know the answer…Julius, something Julius said. Phoenix. Lazarus.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Nicola breathes. "A contingency plan. You knew we'd lose all along."

"The Greeks," Malcolm nods towards the parapet, "are inside the fucking walls, Nicola. We're going out the fucking back gate."

Nicola lifts an eyebrow. "And…what, then we found Rome?"

He gives her a look of utter derision. "Well, if you're fucking _married_ to that particular fucking analogy. Although I think 'wait until the Greeks have settled in a bit, and then come back and fucking torch the place' would be a slightly more _accurate_ description of what I have in mind."

" _Vive la résistance_ ," mutters Nicola.

" _Oui, ch érie_," he replies.

Nicola crosses her arms. "You've just thrown the entire upper echelon of the party to the wolves, haven’t you? Not to mention the massive lies you've told the press for the last three weeks. Fucking hell, Malcolm, remind me not to trust you."

He narrows his eyes at her. "I'll make a note of it. Now, c'mon, I think the Lord of the Fucking Baldy Fairies is expecting us." He kicks the prop away from the door and Nicola follows him down the stairs.

"Oh," she says, with mock-innocence, "were you invited as well?"

"Invited?" He stops in the stairwell and twists around to look at her. "Fuck off. _Invited_. It's _my_ fucking meeting." He starts back down the stairs again. "I'm only letting Julius run it so he doesn't have time to hang himself with one of his expensive lordy ties. Waste of good silk."

"Sorry," Nicola says lightly. "My mistake."

"Yeah, well," Malcolm turns again at the entry to the noisy upper floor. "Events are going to get a wee bit fucking complicated from now on, Nicola. Try and fucking keep up, will you?"

Nicola pauses. She regards him quietly, her hand resting on the edge of the rail.

"Yes," she says, finally. "Yes. Of course."


End file.
